Where is wind power the most effective?

Will the growing cost parity between wind power versus coal / natural gas radically change the global power generation and utility industry?

• If the price of generating wind power is approaching the price of coal and natural gas in windy areas, will this not lead to big problems for the coal industry and more new wind farms? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-17/wind-power-rivals-coal-with-1-billion-order-from-buffett.html: Power from coal costs about $78.30 a megawatt-hour to produce and gas costs $69.71, compared with $82.61 for onshore wind farms, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MidAmerican expects to close some coal-powered plants in 2015 as the price of wind power continues to slide.

• Answer:

  Radical change is a bit subjective to define.  In my opinion, expansion of Wind Power has had the greatest impact on the large scale centralized power generation world of any renewable technology in recent times.  Hydro has always been a major part of the industry, and recent project additions are more business as usual for the industry. I don't think wind power is likely to have a near term impact on what I would describe as the utility business, which is typically thought of as the transmission and distribution of electricity (and billing for it).  Solar at a smaller scale is the bigger player here.   Smaller wind turbines just aren't as cost effective or accessible for the average residential or commercial customer. For large centralized power generation, wind has already had a big impact across the world.  Wind power has lead directly to the curtailment of output from coal and gas fired power plants in the US Northwest and Germany.  Wind is having a measurable impact on oil consumption for power generation in more isolated areas (true in Hawaii as well).  In short the prevalence of wind is likely to result in some structural changes to large scale power generation over time.  Future coal and gas power plants are likely to be designed and operated in a more flexible manner.  Unit sizes may be more spread out and decrease in size on average.  Market price volatility is likely to shrink as more and more energy is sourced from the free commodity that is wind and the industry gets more flexible (note that this does not mean that average prices won't increase, just the volatility piece).  Wind will also create lots of neat niche opportunities for frequency response and storage investments.